Top 3 Open Source JavaScript Web Frameworks

Over the last few years we have seen the rise of many JavaScript frameworks. Ember , Backbone, Angular , React etc….

The rate at which new frameworks are entering the market is only increasing. Some of them will fall on the wayside for lack of interest or poor adoption.

There are multiple factors that we should consider when we make a decision to choose a particular framework for web application development. Apart from the features or the problems that the framework solves , two main factors that needs to be considered are the reputation of the team behind developing the framework and your development teams familiarity with the frameworks. In most enterprise development teams the adoption of a particular framework is made by a couple of key people and everyone else just follows. I think that’s not a bad idea as long as the two key people can influence other members of the team about the reasoning behind their decision.

I intentionally included only 3 frameworks , though I could have added 2 more and made it a top 5 list. The increase in the number of available options only diminishes the value of all the options and in practice will not help you in your decision-making.

Angular1.x and Angular2.0 are now branded as AngularJS and Angular respectively. AngularJS, even though is used widely at the moment, I think Angular will eventually be widely adopted by many front end web developers and has the potential to be the leading framework of choice for web application development. It also has the advantage of the backing of the core google angular team making continuous improvements. If you are already working in AngularJS you can migrate to an Angular ( Formerly Angular 2) application by following the migration path provided below.

React seems to be doing well also as it too is backed by a strong team from Facebook. It solved performance issues that were found in AngularJS by using a virtual DOM concept. These are the rankings based on the GitHub popularity